Words of Wisdom

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast Control thy passions, lest they take vengeance on thee.
- Epictetus: Ancient Greek Philosopher

Success Comes From Failure

Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
- Napoleon Hill:

The Power to Change is Within

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
– Carl Jung

The Power to Change is Within

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
– Carl Jung

Breaking out of The Box

"Once we rid ourselves of traditional thinking we can get on
with creating the future."
- James Bertrand

Wisdom from a Wise Woman

83 year old Barbara Sartor came to me saying, "I have been an active, normal-weight person most of my life, but in the past two years I've gained 30 lbs. When it comes to controlling cookie cravings, my insides insist on doing their own thing. Freedom to do as you darn please is sometimes a trap."

Lesson: Creating rules for yourself, that work for you, is often the greater freedom in the long run.

Recipe: BAKED HALIBUT WITH CILANTRO-ALMOND PESTO

Serves: 4

0 Grams Saturated Fat per Serving

Ingredients

* ½ cup loosely packed fresh cilantro
* ¼ cup slivered almonds
* 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
* 1 teaspoon minced garlic
* Juice from one whole lemon
* 1/8 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
* 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
* 1 ½ pounds halibut fillets (or any other firm white fish such as snapper or flounder)
* Extra virgin olive oil

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. In a food processor, process the cilantro, almonds, Parmesan cheese, garlic, lemon juice, measured salt and extra virgin olive oil for 15 to 20 seconds, or until well blended.
3. Brush the extra virgin olive oil on both sides of the halibut and season lightly with salt. Place the cod on a lightly oiled baking dish and spread the pesto over the fillets. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until fish is cooked through. Serve at once.

Chef’s Notes

This quick-fix dish provides a burst of both flavor and nutrients including omega-3 essential fats, antioxidant vitamin E, heart-healthy magnesium and phytonutrients (plant substances that help support a healthy immune system.) Serve with sides of baked sweet potatoes and green beans.

Recipe by Ivy Larson
GoldCoastCure.com

Making Your Mistakes Count

Brandi Chastain plays soccer. In 1999 she accidentally scored a goal in the wrong net. The other team got the point. This wasn’t just any old game. It was the quarterfinals for the Women’s World Cup. Did Brandi sulk and ask to get taken out of the game? No! Did she let it rattle her confidence? No! She let it motivate her to recover and persevere to tie the game, which the U.S. team won.

Lots of people saw Brandi’s mistake. It was a big deal. She could have let embarrassment deflate her and play on her nerves for other games. Because she didn’t, Brandi isn’t remembered for her blunder. Nine days later in the final game, she scored the goal that won the Cup. Brandi proved that mistakes don’t hurt you! You hurt you when you respond to them in ways that negatively affect what you do later.

Brandi says, “It’s what your do after the mistakes that counts.” You can deal with one and move on, or dwell on embarrassment and let it make you feel incompetent. Mistakes can teach you what you have to do differently, if you keep them in perspective and not let them make you question your competency or feel inadequate. You choose whether to let a goof hurt you or to cut yourself slack and get back on track. Become more conscious of your reaction to mistakes.

* Don’t insult yourself. If you keep referring to yourself as an idiot or stupid, you’ll eventually believe it. Don’t use words that you wouldn’t use on your best friend if she made a mistake. How often do you tell a friend, “You’re an idiot and should be punished?” Yet we call ourselves names and punish ourselves. Allow a kinder perception of what you did. You goofed, not screwed up. You’re silly, not an idiot or loser. Pay attention to your self-perception and choose a kinder outlook.

* Don’t blow what you did out of proportion. It’s common to magnify faults and drag out misery by rehashing what you did in your mind. It’s a mistake, not a sin! Don’t make it more than it is. If people say it’s no big deal, accept that it’s no big deal. It’s done—you can only do what’s necessary to be fix it, without making it a catastrophe.

* No more “should haves”! Saying “I should have…” makes you feel wrong. It does you no good to look back and think about how you wish you could change what you can’t change. Your mistake is over. Look ahead!

* Let it go quickly. Every day you hold onto guilt or blame or horror of a past action is another day you’re punished unnecessarily. That damages your spirit. Don’t hold yourself to a higher standard than your friends. You don’t punish them, so why punish you? List all your feelings – anger, inconvenience, embarrassment, etc. – read it aloud, and then burn it. That helps let it go.

* Forgive YOU. You can’t do this while beating yourself up. Forgive you for being human and imperfect. Until you forgive, you can’t let it go. Be loving to you!

* Learn to laugh at yourself. Don’t put yourself down but laugh when you goof up. Say oops if you forget something. Allow yourself to feel the humor instead of gritting teeth and feeling stupid. If you trip and fall with people watching, ask how many points you get. Learn to find humor in mistakes to lighten them.

* Remember that most people are supportive. Others don’t judge us nearly as harshly as we judge ourselves. They don’t want you to feel bad and aren’t gleeful if you do something wrong. Most mistakes aren’t important to others. And those who don’t feel bad for you won’t feel good for you when you succeed so who cares about them!

* Be open to reassurance from others. When people try to say nice things after you goof, do you scoff them off or minimize their kind words? Don’t! Everyone goofs and knows how lousy it feels so they want to make you feel better. Allow them to.

* Do affirmations to reassure yourself. ”I’m a winner.” “I’m not my mistakes and can do things well.” Saying affirmations helps heal bruised confidence and facilitates moving on. They also drown out negative thoughts since it’s hard to think both at once.

* Look for lessons and be more conscious / careful in the future. What can you do differently? If you didn’t prepare enough for a presentation, prepare more. If you goofed because you’re tired, try to rest more. And if it was an accident that you broke something or tripped, accept that accidents happen and you can only do your best.

Cut yourself slack if you fail your perfection standards! When you focus on imperfections, they become bigger than they are and distract you from good qualities. You can balance what you don’t have with your strengths.

Michael Jordan said, "I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot...and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." Don’t let mistakes take you out. Conquer them instead! Keep what you did in perspective. Ask yourself if it will matter ten, or even one year from now. The faster you let it go, the less damage to your confidence. Never forget that everyone makes mistakes – that’s being human. It’s how you let them affect you – or not – that counts. Make sure that your main perception is how terrific and talented you are!
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This article originally appeared on Daylle Deanna Schwartz’s blog, Lessons from a Recovering DoorMat. http://www.lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat.com/ Daylle is a speaker, self-empowerment counselor, music industry consultant, and best-selling author of 9 books, including All Men Are Jerks until Proven Otherwise How to Please a Woman In & Out of Bed and Straight Talk with Gay Guys. Her next is Nice Girls on Top. She is regularly quoted in publications including the New York Times, Cosmo and Men’s Health, and on TV and radio as an expert, including Oprah, Good Morning America, Inside Edition, Howard Stern, and Montel Williams.
daylle@daylle.com http://www.daylle.com. She also publishes Self-Empowerment Quarterly newsletter. daylle@daylle.com http://www.daylle.com

Your Creative Mind

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
- Carl Sagan

Keep Your Eye on the Goal

Aim at nothing and you'll hit it--every time!
--Ancient Indian Proverb

Choose Your Direction

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
- Thoreau

Say Yes to Life!

A word that frightens me and limits ninety percent of our population is no. "No" sends chills up my spine when I hear somebody say it. And they say no to life and no to love and no to beauty and no to art and nature and God! And they just no, no, no their way through life!

It's terrifying because life is yes, and love is yes, and beauty is yes and joy is yes. And even pain is yes, not no to pain. The greatest lessons I've ever learned in my life I've leared through pain. Now, I'd prefer learning through joy, that would be the best way, but sometimes life isn't like that. There are no bad experiences. The only bad experiences are the ones we don't learn from.
-Leo Buscaglia

Opening to New Possiblities

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
- Napolean Hill

Try a NEW approach

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

No Need for Perfection

"We are constantly in the process of becoming."
Soren Kierkegaard

The Only One Who Fails is the One Who Gives Up

"I've failed my way to success."
Thomas Edison

Is Your Scale a Friend or a Foe?

The benefit of a scale is that it gives you feedback. Like a compass, it lets you know what direction you are headed in, and allows you to make adjustments accordingly. However there are a few possible pitfalls that arise when you begin to rely solely on a scale to determine your feelings about yourself and your behavior.

One of the most common hazards of the bathroom scale is that, although it appears to be helping you to lose the extra weight and achieve a life of slenderness, it can insidiously begin to control you.

When you rely on a scale to tell you how you are doing, you are looking outside of yourself for acknowledgement. It’s very easy to get caught in the game of “trying to beat the scale.” For example, you may have eaten a very salty meal, causing the numbers on the scale to go up. Instantly you become consumed by a sense of defeat. In reality the only thing that is being measured is the water content of your body, which fluctuates widely, even throughout a single day.

Weighing yourself can become an obsession. Did you ever weigh yourself, go to the bathroom, and weigh yourself again? Another common scenario for the perpetual dieter is stepping on the scale in the morning, working out furiously, and then quickly making a beeline for the bathroom scale again, in the hopes of getting a new response. Many dieters can relate to the painful obsession caused by a subtle or not so subtle addiction to the scale.

The scale can often be a way to convince the subconscious mind that we are on some kind of a temporary mission to lower our body weight. As soon as that occurs, and we succeed, either by starving ourselves or exercising excessively, then we can go back to our normal way of eating. We may try to beat the scale or trick the scale in an effort to insure that we get the results we so desperately wish to see. Though the scale may appear to be keeping us in line and helping us to work towards our coveted goal, in reality the scale often serves as a way to continue to put distance between our selves and our true goals.

This is because our true goal, if we look deep inside our hearts, is to learn to live in harmony with food on a permanent basis, to honor and care for ourselves, and most of all to learn to trust ourselves around food. Yes, of course you want to live at your ideal weight. But don’t you also want to live in freedom? Being a slave to the scale robs you of the liberty from compulsion around food that you long for.


The only way to have permanent results with weight loss is to learn to trust ourselves when it comes to food. When we are eating out of physical hunger, and selecting those foods which nourish our bodies and sustain our lives, we no longer need to cling to a scale to tell us whether we’ve been “good” or “bad.” We have an innate knowing that, although we may be overweight in the moment, we are heading in the right direction. We also know that slow and steady is what is going to win the race. Even if we accidentally overeat one day, we begin to automatically balance that by eating less the next day, or taking an extra walk. We get a feeling sense that we are heading in the desired direction—that of our ideal weight, and even more importantly, freedom from food addiction.

The scale keeps us looking outward for feedback. If we “trick” the scale by measuring water weight, we are keeping our compulsion with food in place. Over the long haul, the only way to succeed is to make peace with food, and learn to truly enjoy the healthy foods that sustain our health and our quality of life. When exercise is used as a tool to get the scale to tell us what we want it to, it becomes a tedious chore that we tolerate in order to gain a specific result. Instead, when activity becomes a way of life—something that we miss when we don’t have a chance to do it—we find more and better ways to incorporate exercise into the day.

When used correctly, the scale can be a wonderful way to confirm what you already know—that you are in the process of mastering your relationship with food, your body and your self. A once-a-week weigh-in can be a lovely ritual to help you celebrate your commitment to yourself and your health.

If you do choose to own a scale, make sure that it is not your only feedback mechanism. Remember to celebrate all your victories—not just the numbers on the scale moving in the desired direction. Your jeans feeling loose, realizing that you are no longer tempted by the ringing bell of the ice-cream truck, or going out to dinner and making the healthier choice when ordering, are all causes to acknowledge yourself and rejoice in the fact that you are indeed moving forward towards your goal. The ultimate freedom is the deep sense of satisfaction that comes when you absolutely know that you can trust yourself around food. With or without a scale, the only place to gain that sense of security around food is within your own self. Remember, the true power for the permanent change that is reflected on the numbers of the bathroom scale is inside of you always.
By: Rena Greenberg

Staying on Track

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." - Henry Ford

Aim High

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." - Les Brown

The Power of Belief

"Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right." - Unknown

Become the Observer

Through self-observation, more presence comes into your life automatically. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped by it.
- Eckhart Tolle

Seeking Beauty Within

People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves.
- Salma Hayek

Helen Keller's Wisdom

The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.
- Helen Keller

Facing Fear

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face . . .We must do that which we think we cannot.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Ancient Chinese Proverb

That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.

Quote from Michael Jordan

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 hundred games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Michael Jordan

Finding a Weight Loss Buddy

When you're serious about losing that excess weight, enlisting the support of a buddy can be an incredible source of support. Your buddy is someone who can help you move beyond any potential obstacles, rather than commiserate with you.

Though there are challenges to be had when you take on any goal, a true buddy is there to help you keep your eye on what you desire, rather than succumb to the temptation to focus on any apparent difficulties. You want a buddy who is compassionate about your problems, but someone who chiefly wants to help you celebrate and grow your successes.

It's essential that your weight loss buddy believe that it's possible for you to change your life and your eating habits and can imagine you in a new way. Both of you must know that a pattern is only a matter of conditioning in the brain, and as human beings we absolutely have the ability to break through old mental programs that no longer serve us.

What it takes is a deep desire, a belief that it's possible succeed, and a commitment to taking the actions that lead us to the result that we desire. It also requires the willingness to forgive ourselves each time we mess up, because "failure" is inevitable as we move toward ultimate success. Whether we are caring for an elderly parent, raising a "difficult" child, struggling with financial issues, or living with an insensitive spouse, no matter what our impediments, it doesn't benefit us to have a buddy who gets as “caught” by our difficulties as we do. A weight loss buddy is someone who can see us reaching our highest potential, even when we can’t.

If you are in need of someone to be there for you in this way, I recommend you go to WeightLossBuddy.com, where you can be matched up with a Weight Loss Buddy, at no charge. When looking for your Buddy, share this Blog entry with them to make sure that you are both in agreement about what you want to do for each other. I wish you the best of success and please let me know how it goes. I love to hear success stories about the buddy system because I know that it works.

Cherish the Moment

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift;
that's why they call it the present."
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

The Number One Ingredient for Success

I can't emphasize enought the importance of belief in yourself when it comes to success. The number one hindrance to permanent weight loss is the lack of belief an individual has in his or her ability to be successful.

To help build your own belief in yourself, think of an area of your life where you were previously stuck and then managed to overcome the difficulty. Perhaps you were addicted to alcohol, cigarettes, nail biting, or even a person. Remember the obsession and how you thought you'd never be able to move past that particular compulsion . . . and of course, in time, you did change.

Use that experience as an example to yourself that change on the inside is absolutely possible. Believe in yourself no matter how challenging things may seem in the moment. Did you know that as a young man Elvis Presley was told that he couldn't sing? Isn't it wonderful that he did not let that negative statement influence his conviction in himself or his perseverance? You may have heard that at one time, Babe Ruth, the legendary baseball star, had more homeruns than any other player. Did you know that he also had the most strike outs?

Each "failure" brings you one step closer towards achieving your goal. Studies show that people who succeed in taking weight off and keeping it off for at least twenty years, had tried a minimum of 3-5 times in the past. The only one who fails is the one who gives up. Keep your eye on the goal, and know that every "mistake" is an opportunity to learn about yourself and help you to fine tune what is ultimately going to work for you so that you can achieve your goal of health and permanent weight loss.

Was I Even Hypnotized?

For some people, hypnosis can be very dramatic. However, for others, its powerful effects may be much more subtle. When Zara left the smoking cessation seminar at Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, Florida, she felt very skeptical. "Was I even hypnotized?" she wondered. It was the day before her birthday and she desperately wanted to quit. However, after the hypnosis, she wasn't quite sure if any great change had taken place. But she did notice something different inside herself. To her delight, she wasn't reaching for a cigarette, the way she normally would. She decided to give the program a shot and
re-inforce the hypnosis with her audio recording. A month later, she hasn't had a single cigerette!

Zara was a smoker for approximately 40 years. She had tried to quit 3 or 4 times in the past with no luck. She'd get very angry and out of control after just 5 or 6 hours without a cigarette. So she always gave up. This time she came out of the seminar still wanting a cigarette. But it was different somehow. She could control what she would do! The physical withdraw symptoms were not nearly as bad as in the past. On top of everything, a few days after the seminar, her brother passed away. He had lung cancer, and other complications. Zara went to the hospital with her sister, and on the way, though she wanted a cigarette very badly, she remembered that she had told her brother, Greg, on Sunday evening that she had quit. He was very pleased. So she held on to that thought and did a lot of deep breathing!

We can all learn from Zara's commitment to herself and belief in the possiblity for personal change. Whether your hypnosis experiences are dramatic or subtle, one thing is for sure. You can create the future you desire by clinging to and replaying the images, phrases and strong emotions that reflect the life that you want. What you focus on grows! So if you want to be a non-smoker, focus on the thrill of living in freedom, cleanliness and in control of your life and your habits. If you long to fit into those comfortable jeans, create a vision in your mind's eye of how great you'll look and feel as you stroll through town in your youthful, attractive outfit. Drop any doubt and hold the vision of the life that you deserve. Step into your new image, leave the past behind, and say, "yes" to your new and fabulous creation--the new you! Thank you, Zara, for your inspiration.
EasyWillpower.com

Changing Your Focus

I've been working with a lovely young woman, named Judy, on her cravings. She was telling me that she was really feeling upset the other morning and had a huge craving for a big salt bagel with cream cheese. She even got into the right hand turn lane so that she could pull into Dunkin Donuts.....but she stopped herself!

How did she do it? Judy has been practicing self-hypnosis daily by running mental movies of herself in control of her life and her eating habits. She's been practicing looking beyond the desire for certain foods to the real needs within herself that are screaming to be fulfilled. At the top of the list is her need to honor and care for herself by letting little upsets pass, all the while respecting her body.

As she crawled along waiting to turn into the fast food restaurant, instead of making mental pictures of how good that bagel would taste, she used her time wisely and went through some of the exercises she had learned from my book, in her head, and realized that a bagel would not fix whatever she was upset with and would only make her feel worse in the long run. What relief she felt to be in control of that situation!

You can do the same! The next time you're in a situation where you find yourself reaching for foods that you know are harmful to you, don't dwell of the taste of these foods, rather imagine their effect on your mind, body and emotions. Instead of the moment's pleasure you may receive, focus on the hours of guilt, shame as well as the physical pain (lack of health) these foods are likely to inflict on you. By shifting your focus, your desires change. There's no willpower involved at all . . . because you'll now feel differently--you'll no longer want the items that cause you harm.

Like Judy, you too can prefer to eat the foods that sustain your health as you become aware of and shift your inner world. The first step is to notice what you are focused on, and change that focus to reflect what you truly desire--health, happiness and freedom from food addiction.
EasyWillpower.com

The Past Does Not Equal The Future

Ronald used to come home from work everyday, plop down on the sofa, feeling exhausted, grab a bag of chips and the remote control and zone out for a few hours. The feeling of dissastisfaction that began to gnaw at him was a wonderful thing. Sometimes feeling discontent is a good sign that something is about to change. And it was. Ronald began to feel so disgusted with himself that as a last resort he began to read a book about using the power of the mind to lose weight, that a friend had lent him. As he began to apply the teachings from my book The Right Weigh, to himself, he noticed to his surprise and delight, he was changing. One thing he began to realize was that the way he imagined his day would go was pretty much how it turned out.

He began to visualize a "success scenario." For Ronald, that meant coming home from work feeling energized enough to do some activity. He spent 10 minutes every morning and 10 minutes every evening visualizing this new scenario, even though it didn't seem true or real to him yet. He knew that sometimes you have to fake it 'till you make it. He imagined the new scenario using all his senses so he would feel what it felt like, looked like, sounded like and smelled like to feel energized at the end of the work day.

After practicing this imagery for only a few days, Ronald felt compelled to be active after work. If there was snow on the ground, he went out and shoveled the lawn. In the Fall, he raked the leaves, and in the Spring, he planted a garden. When it was cold or rainy out, new projects around the house brought alive Ron's creativity and joy of workmanship. Without even trying, within six month's time, Ron realized that he had gone down 2 notches on his belt and felt better than ever. It's never too late to begin again.
EasyWillpower.com

A New Beginning

We at EasyWillpower.com want you to know it's never too late to begin again. How long would you give a child to learn to walk? As long as it takes would be the obvious response. You would not berate the child for failures, bumps or bruises along the way. What would happen if you gave yourself that same luxury when in comes to achieving a body weight that you are comfortable with?

You may assume that by being hard on yourself, beating yourself up, and giving yourself a strong scolding when you “mess up,” you are giving yourself the kick in the behind that will magically get you to stop your self-sabotaging behaviors. However, the opposite is more likely to be true. When you can open your heart to yourself and give yourself love and compassion for your struggle with food instead, you can begin to relax and take an honest assessment of your situation. As long as you take a hard stance against yourself, you will find yourself bracing against the inner onslaught, and even rebelling against your inner critic.

Of course, this inner critic has only your best interest in mind. It wants the same thing that you deeply desire—to be healthy, happy and at your ideal weight. It believes that you need “tough love.” The problem is that your inner child needs gentle love and compassion in order to change her deep-seated, negative behavior patterns—not more criticism. She may appear to be compliant when the critic shows up and starts spewing advice and admonition regarding your latest chocolate binge, but in reality she is very likely cringing inside with shame and regret. Unfortunately these negative feelings begin to spin into the type of pain that all too often sets you up for the next binge.

Take a look at the cycle. You have “bad” feelings inside just lurking below the surface. Perhaps there is an incident that triggered you. Your mother-in-law criticized your cooking, you exchanged some harsh words with your spouse, or your 12-year old flunked his science exam. As you ruminate about the situation, you begin to feel uncomfortable. Before you even realize it, you are finishing off a bag of chips that had been left on the counter. As soon as you become conscious of what you are doing, your inner critic forges in, full steam ahead, “What is wrong with you? You are so weak! You said that you were going on a diet this week. You can not stick with anything. You’ll always be fat. Don’t even complain about it . . .”

How do you feel inside when subjected to this type of internal attack? Ashamed, humiliated, weak? Any of those reactions would be perfectly understandable given the tone of your harsh critic. And what do you do when you feel embarrassed and low? Chances are you just throw in the towel and agree with your critic’s assertion that you deserve to be fat and nothing will ever change for you.

What would happen if you broke the cycle with a new, more productive response to mistakes that are bound to occur on the road to permanent weight loss? Imagine a new scenario with a much preferred outcome. An event occurs in your life that is upsetting to you. Perhaps you discover that you weren’t invited to a local social event and you feel rejected. In this new scenario, rather than ignore your feelings or judge them or the situation, you simply respond to it (take responsibility for it).

You feel the feeling of rejection in your body. Perhaps you become aware of the inner voices that accompany this feeling and write them down. You may write down the following sentences:

“I should have been invited to Lori’s party.”
“I wish I had been invited to the get-together.”

Then notice the assumptions that your mind may automatically make, for example:

“I never get invited to any social events.”
“I am always left out.”

Allow yourself full freedom to write down the chain of thought that continues,

“I am so lonely.”
“I’m always alone.”
“My only friend is chocolate.”
“I am going to treat myself to a candy bar so that I’ll feel better.”
“I deserve it.”
“Then I’ll enjoy my time alone with my candy bar and soap opera.”
“I’ll just forget about them.”

When you have the opportunity to observe your thoughts on paper like this, you gain perspective. You can begin to discern your own irrational thinking and recognize the voice of pain. Some obvious examples of unrealistic thinking are words like “always,” “never,” and “should.” When you hear these inner words, you can begin to notice that inner pain is alive and operating in the moment.

Let go of any judgment you may have about that. If you can accept the fact that pain is a part of the human experience and you are simply experiencing your share, at this particular time, then you can let go of any desperate need to do something about it or “fix” it. Just sit with it, knowing that it will move.

Your wisest course of action right now is to continue to write down any thoughts as they pop in to your head so that you can separate your identity from them. They are not who you are. They are simply a manifestation of the inner pain that is activated in this moment. Witness your strong urge to drown the pain and the incessant mental chatter with your drug of choice—food. Notice that you do have a choice. This is your opportunity to break the vicious cycle of self-sabotage.

As you listen to the negative voices urging you to indulge in chocolate or sugary, fattening food to deaden the pain, create an internal mental image of this dark, hurtful and fearful energy. Perhaps it is nothing more that a big cloud of smoke. Stand up to that voice of pain, and tell it that you are not listening to it anymore. Demand that it go away and leave you alone. Be firm and strong. Tell that voice that you are not succumbing to its fear-based thinking. No matter how solid the fear feels, it can only dissolve in the presence of true strength and self-care.

Now feel your own body. Send some appreciation and mercy into your being. Breathe into your chest and belly fully. Notice that you are separate from that negative thinking. It is not who you are—it is simply an energy passing through you. This energy actually feeds on your reaction to it. By disengaging from it, you stop it dead in its tracks.

Now is the time, to give yourself love and support. Repeat positive phrases to yourself, such as the affirmations listed at our site: EasyWillpower.com. In the energy of love, pain and fear dissolve. You can not get rid of discomfort, but you can submerge it in a higher vibration of love, rendering it lifeless.

Hold yourself the way you would hold a small child who you just rescued from an adult abuser. Support yourself in this new way and soon it will become a new, positive habit. Ask yourself what you are needing. If you are hungry, take a moment to hold an inner picture of various food choices, and see which one will actually support the health of your entire system—mind, body and spirit.

If you are not physically hungry, take this opportunity to let your inner child play. Turn off the mindless soap opera and go for a walk outside. Turn your cd player or iPod to your favorite music and enjoy the thrill of moving your body. Go out and smell the flowers—literally. Celebrate this day and your inner victory.

It’s only by releasing your old way of responding to the pain you inevitably encounter on this journey called life, that you can begin to embrace something new for yourself. The old way of beating ourselves up for getting it wrong just isn’t going to work. When you take space for yourself and give yourself the love and gentleness your being craves, while at the same time redirecting old, harmful, self-sabotaging behaviors, you slowly learn to relate to yourself in a new way. You can truly begin to rejoice in the preciousness of your life and this new beginning that is being created. Be patient with yourself. In the same way that every baby who is physically healthy learns to walk eventually, we do ultimately learn from our mistakes as long as we stay focused on a new, positive outcome.
EasyWillpower.com